Prelyria – The New VoxElyria

As most of you will probably already know, VoxElyria was the name for the Chronicles of Elyria test game client, which opened up a way for the developers, and alpha backers to test the game’s core game mechanics without having to integrate everything with the real game release, or the need to create 3D graphics just for the purpose of testing functionality.

However, as of 0.40 release, Caspian (Jeromy Walsh) has confirmed that VoxElyria, a voxel-based version of Elyria wouldn’t suffice to the testing needs due to limitations with the graphical view, such as; animation restrictions, layering (for armor and clothing) and camera positioning. Hence why the development team have now changed – or ‘upgraded’ shall we say VoxElyria to Prelyria.

Prelyria follows the same principle as VoxElyria, however, instead of being voxel based, and using slightly different methods to implement the core mechanics, Prelyria will now be running on UE4 (Unreal Engine 4) – pretty much being able to mirror the full game, which also uses the Unreal Engine, except that Prelyria is a low-poly graphical version.

This means that:

The Prelyria client can use the same technology as CoE

The Prelyria client can use the same animation pipeline

The Prelyria client is able to utilize the same UI/UX as CoE

The Prelyria client allows for rapid development of assets

Basically, Prelyria is going to be an even closer match to CoE’s full game, but still offers a faster way to test mechanics due to the use of basic graphics.

Prelyria is already in full swing, and you can see some screenshots of the testing client coming together:

This really is exciting stuff, and such a shock to see the amazing difference between VoxElyria and Prelyria, which looks like a new game in itself!

We still don’t have a confirmed date for when the first version of Prelyria will be available to Alpha 1 backers, but as soon as we do, you’ll be the first to know!